This invention relates to the field of call centers, and more particularly, this invention relates to the field of call centers having automatic call distributors and interactive voice response units.
Calls centers that use digital switching systems have become commonplace in businesses and institutions throughout the United States and the world. Often these call systems use separate and functionally different automatic call distributor (ACD) servers and interactive voice response (IVR) servers. The ACD allows routing of calls received via a switch to a plurality of different agents, depending on the predetermined standards defined by the call center system. Examples of these standards include routing based on DNIS or ANI. Some call center systems also have skills based routing on a limited scale.
In these prior art call centers, the IVR script is separately established under one control system, generally run on a processor that is operative and associated with the IVR server. On the other hand, ACD operation is scripted and controlled via a computer and processor that are associated with the ACD, but separate from any association with the IVR server. This is a complicated prior art system, and the lack of integration among any ACD and IVR servers and components makes for complicated call center administration. Additionally, the lack of functional integration among the ACD and IVR components, especially with scripting functions, makes call center set up time consuming, and makes real time reporting of call center operation and agent efficiency difficult. Also, this type of prior art call center system makes agent evaluation and call center evaluation less reliable.
In some prior art call center systems, the user sets up call routing first, and then pushes skills into the call routing. This type of routing and associated scripting is inefficient. Also, many call center systems use proprietary report generation software packages having different prepackaged report templates that cannot be customized with standard office products, such as commercially available SQL or other database products. xe2x80x9cSnap shotxe2x80x9d reports are thus not available or reliable enough to evaluate a call center performance in any complicated call center system using IVR and ACD servers. Thus, these call center systems are not dynamic, and do not effectively provide service to customers and callers. They also do not respond quickly to changing conditions in a manner to allow adequate real time report generation and the control and tracking of calls within the call center, whether in queue or being responded to by an agent. Any custom applications also are not readily exchangeable across different platforms and are not scalable for different solutions and thus, cannot meet diverse current and future call center demands.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method and system of configuring IVR and ACD script flow efficiently in an integrated package.
A method of configuring the scripting of a call center is disclosed and includes an interactive voice response (IVR) server and automatic call distributor (ACD) server and comprises the step of displaying, as a result of user input, a script editor window on a call center computer as part of a graphical user interface for the call center. The script editor window includes a script display area. Script icons are representative of ACD and IVR scripting actions, and are dragged from an action toolbar into the script display area. The script icons are linked based on user input in the order which represents the IVR and ACD script flow within the call center.
In another aspect of the present invention, the script editor window includes a property display area that lists properties or scripting actions represented by icons. The method further comprises the step of highlighting a script icon that has been dragged into the script display area such that as a result of highlighting the script icon, the properties for the scripting action represented by the script icon are displayed within the script display area. A script flow can begin with a START script icon representing the start of script flow, and can terminate with a script icon that represents a terminating action for the script flow. The script editor window can further comprise a series of tabs that are selected for displaying a different set of icons within the action toolbar.
In still another aspect of the present invention, a method of configuring the scripting of a call center includes an interactive voice response (IVR) server and automatic call distributor (ACD) server, and comprises the step of displaying as a result of user input, a script editor window on a call center computer as part of a graphical user interface for the call center. The script editor window includes a script display area. Script icons that are representative of ACD and IVR scripting actions are dragged from an action toolbar into the script display area. The script icons are selected from a plurality of sets of script icons that are displayed within the command toolbar by selecting an action tab representative of a selected set of script icons. The script icons are positioned in the order corresponding to a script flow through the call center, such that if a previous action within the script flow is appropriate, a connection line is drawn between the previous script icon and newly added script icon, representing the respective actions of the script flow.
The method can also comprise the step of selecting a standard action tab for displaying script icons representative of one of at least (a) starting an IVR script, (b) capturing a dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) digits, (c) playing sound files, (d) playing voice prompts, (e) evaluating an expression and branching a call flow direction based on the evaluation, (f) defining of branch nodes, (g) recording of speech, (h) terminating a script, and (i) dialing digits through a phone system. An advanced action tab can also be selected for displaying script icons representative of at least one of (a) transferring a call, (b) combining actions, (c) assigning the results of an expression to a variable, (d) executing a previously saved IVR script, (e) sending an external DLL hook routing, (f) sending data to an external program via a data pipe, (g) sending an e-mail message, and (h) and sending a message to a pager.
A graphical user interface is contained on a computer screen of a call center computer and is used for configuring the scripting of a call center that includes the interactive voice response (IVR) server and an automatic call distributor (ACD) server. A script editor window has a script display window. An action toolbar contains script icons that represent respective ACD and IVR scripting actions. The script icons are dragged from the action toolbar into the script display window and linked together to represent IVR and ACD script flow within the call center.